Discuss computer hardware here.
Don't know which components to get? Don't know how to spend your upgrade money? Then ask here, and forum regulars will tell you to fuck off in a number of different ways!

The general thought among the engine team here is that SSD will be common place in ~2 years. By then they'll have the kinks worked out, they'll be a decent size and the price won't require a bank loan to get a good one.

Traditional SATA mechanical disks, which do ~110-115mb/s reads with 8-10ms seek time are not exactly in the same category as SSDs with 0.1ms seeks and 200+ mb/s reads. Neither are laptop drives that are even slower.

I normally wouldn't deviate but I was really trying to get UnrealEngine3 running here so I could work at home and I installed some other drivers. I have been properly flogged and will stick to the script from now on.

Let's preface this with a bit of history. I've been an NVIDIA user since Geforce 256 and a pretty happy one at that. I've never ever had any signifiant driver issues with NVIDIA products, so I sticked to it, especially considering I've been hearing of and reading about multitudes of compatibility, stability and general driver issues on the ATI front over the years. The one time I had decided to make an exception was (I think) about 4-5 years ago where I had recommended a specific ATI card to a friend after having seen it receive a few good reviews. Except that we could never get it to work: the system would power up, give video, boot, etc, but not a single ATI driver package would recognise the card so we were stuck with the generiv video driver. After several days of battling with installations and reinstallations, we said fuck it, took the ATI card back to the store, brought an NVIDIA card with us and it "just worked". Needless to say, that had only reinforced my idea that I should just stick with NVIDIA.

Fast forward to today and NVIDIA Fermi GTX470 and GTX480 cards launched and they're a huge load of poo poo in regards to it's power draw and temperatures and full load operating noise levels. I've been holding up upgrading my videocard for a long time now: I am still using a 8800GTS, all the rest is modern (i5 750, X25-M os drive, 650W PSU, etc) as I have been holding out to see what Fermi ends up being like. Now I am at a crossroads. I had been considering going from 8800GTS to the GTX470, but when you compare it to the ATI 5850, it becomes a really really hard sell: the slight improvement in performance is directly offset by the slightly higher price, the power draw at load is 120W (!!!) higher, the load temperatures are 15C higher and the accompanying increased noise levels are obvious. The second major issue are the reports that Fermi cards do not really truly idle if you have 2 monitors attached to the card (which I always do), see this: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1258/15/ resulting in absurdly high power draw and temperatures even at the desktop. All in all, this all sounds like some serious package of black humor.

So I am very tempted to bite the bullet and just get an ATI card, the 5850 sounds like very good value, BUT... browsing around dozens of forums I am still seeing that on average, ATI users seem to have a lot more compatibility, stability and driver issues than NVIDIA and I am still having shudders remembering that time I had to troubleshoot that ATI card I had recommended to my friend years ago. There are supposedly some flicker issues with some ATI cards, some issues with Bad Company 2 rendering glitches, etc etc all really stupid sounding things that should've been ironed out in a quick fashion a long time ago, but yet people still seem to have to deal with these things.

What's a man to do? Should I just suck it up and go for the 5850 and potentially deal with annoying retarded driver issues on a common basis, but sleep soundly knowing I got myself good performance for low cost with reasonable power draw and temperatures or do I value my sanity and driver stability and reliability more and just go with the GTX470, despite it's very obvious shortcomings?

I can only speak for myself but I just got a new machine with an ATI 5870 in it and it's amazing. I haven't noticed any weirdness at all. I played the 'Just Cause 2' demo yesterday with everything absolutely max'd out (from resolution to effects) and it never dropped a frame.

I have a love/hate relationship with ATI/NVidia as I too am looking forward to owning an HD 5850 soon to replace my GeForce 9800GTX. Hopefully I'll have similar results to Willem, as for some reason L4D2 does not seem to run as fast as I thought it would in my new computer.

I have been buying ATI cards for a while now... they're great. I have a 4870 at the moment and I love it. Their newer cards have great performance for a good price, supposedly the power consumption is low and the cards are quiet.

The driver support is good, they release a new set every month with performance improvements and bug fixes. I can't recall ever having any major problems with any games or apps, honestly (I'm sure it happens but I haven't come across anything myself).

In short, the newer cards are great and the driver support is good. Given your comments above I'd say just get one.

The fact that it's factory overclocked, averaging a 9% performance increase over the reference card in addition to using a non-reference HSF that simulatenously results in noticably lower load temperatures won me over pretty big.

Have bought Evesham in the past and been happy with them but they've disappeared now. Considering Dell and HP, subject to factors above. Advice please. Jago you recommended Overclockers, are they GOOD as well as fast??

But get them to include a copy of Win7 and possibly upgrade the 768MB version of the GTX460 with a 1GB version.

But yeah - Shambler - Build it yourself. Get the i7 950 CPU, and 6Gb of XMS3 PC12800, and a 1TB HDD, get one of those new OCZ PSU's (good VFM), a bloody Coolermaster Elite case, and a GTX460 1GB, a Gigabyte motherboard, and built it yourself. There's not that much to screw up. The CPU's don't even have pins on the bottom anymore :) And the socket 1366 motherboards support SLI and Crossife.

I havent paid any attention to the latest video cards but know that sequential numbering doesnt really mean sequential quality. Which of these is a good card, ie can play most games at a reasonable resolution, and is good value for money?

There's power consumption, and performance. Doesn't look like a great difference. But the 460 is basically slightly less power hungry, overclocks better, and just as powerful as the 465. So get a 460 if you can, gbut if not the 465 is prob gonna be just as fine :)

If you are listening with normal ear plugs and are not a "audiophile" I also recommend transcoding to something like Vorbis Q3. I can't hear a difference if I am on the run and it saves quite some space.

but the navigation is clearly worse than the original firmware... most of the stuff, e.g. switching artists, is more complicated, I'm not really satisfied with that. I wish there was a way to restructure the menus. Other than that, Rockbox is nice. Especially that you can run doom on it :D

Hardware wise, the clip+ is nice, the only thing that bugs me is that the buttons for the volume control are hard to press (esp. because the phone jack is on the opposite side of the case so you can't easily hold the device)

I usually navigate by files. But sometimes I use the database thing too. If you do not return to the homescreen it stays in the last used "directory" so you can simply go back a step or two for choosing another artist. I dont really understand what your problem is.

Previously the jack was on the same side like the volume buttons, THAT was bad. I have not any problems with the setup now. I put my thumb below the jack and use the index finger to click.

And an exploding MSI motherboard and some new RAM. I know that there is a 20% chance that the SATA2 ports will fail after 3 years, but I got a good deal on a mobo with 4xSATA3. I couldn't resist the idea of getting 5Ghz on a quad core which goes like poo off a stick. Core i5 2500k is what I ordered, with for �162 is just a phenominal amount of power. Anyone else thinking of getting Sandy Bridge?

I should mention that this has been happening for quite a while but he only just reached the point of insanity =) I've looked at the pc several times but just can't seem to work out whats causing it, if I was a betting man I would say the memory could be faulty but I don't want to tell him to buy new Ram if it could be something else.

The pc is perfectly stable with standard windows tasks, its just games that are affected. Any ideas?

so Ricky, are you happy with sandy one of yours? I was thinking of a version with integrated graphics so the box wouldn't need much ventilation. But the DRM stuff keeps me wary. And it needs to run in Ubuntu.

95W TDP = good, 4.8Ghz @ 1.38v = good.
Crysis is running on Enthusiast DX10 8xAA 1080p @ 50fps (!)
But im no linux user (or atleast not out of choice) and I got the P67 board so there's no on-chip GFX there. But remember the most you will get as an overclock on a H67 board is the FSB which apparently can give up to a 5% boost, but it overclocks your PCIe frequency. Which is bad.
If you plan on running 3D GFX (games etc) then get P67. Im a Windows user.

Apparently the onboard GFX (the 3000 series I think) is about as fast as a Radeon 5450.

So what do you guys think of SSD vs non-SSD, and 32bit vs 64bit Windows?

Thinking about getting a 120gb SSD for the extra performance, but they're not cheap. And it means storing most crap on a different hdd.

As for the 64bit, I know I'll only be able to run 4gb memory max, but the fact most software is designed to run on 32bit is a bit scary. Any software that's more than 5 years old won't run on 64bit, so I'm bound to have some programs that won't work. Shit even Flash and Java doesn't have an official release for 64. I'd rather just sacrifice some memory and get proper compatibility.

There shouldn't be any problems with 32 bit apps on a 64 bit system. 64 bit cpu's include the entire ia32 instruction set (don't quote me on that), so there shouldn't be any problem. I don't know who told you any software that's more than 5 years old won't run on 64 cpu's but they're retarded. The software will run (mostly), there may be an incompatibles because the software hasn't been updated, but for the most part it will run. I'm pretty sure flash and java both have versions that are 'official' for 64 bit, as i have them installed. There's no reason to not go 64 bit.

I haven't really had any problems running Windows7 64, even though I have another HDD with XP on it. I haven't booted to XP for ages.

The SSD thing - Dont get one of those Kingston ones. They are cheap but I read a couple of reviews and whilst they are fast in some areas, they don't seem to be anywhere near as say OCZ or Crucial. The OCZ Vertex 3 is really fast! Like FUCK ME!!!

But anyway, I have an 80GB Intel SSD at work, and the computer is really quick to boot and load apps. And yes - I have a Samsung Spinpoint F3 SATAII 1TB drive (excellent drive, cheap, massive and fast) as a storage disc with two partitions. I want to put an SSD in my home workstation, but I'm gonna wait a little longer to see if they suddenly get bigger and cheaper. I'd be looking at �170 for something worth having - a fast 120Gb drive. It's damn tempting......

If you buy an SSD and a 64bit OS then you can still keep your old HDD with your old OS on it. Unless you replace the motherboard then the old OS is gonna work if you boot to it, so you're not loosing any capability really.

Depending where you are, there is a bloody good deal on Windows 7 Ultimate on Amazon:

If you get the retail copy (Full Version) then you get a 32 bit disc and a 64 bit disc in the box. And you can carry the OS over to any new systems you might purchase in the future with the same license (unlike OEM versions, where you only get 1 disc, and you are only allowed to use on one motherboard).

If you are in the UK, the above deal is a no-brainer. Its significantly cheaper than the Retail Version of Windows 7 Home Premium! God know's why. Maybe it's because the service pack came out, and now they are trying to get rid of old stock. And no-one bought Ultimate cause it was really expensive.

Well I just assumed, since 64bit systems didn't really come out until around 2005 with XP. So any software before this couldn't be made for a 64bit system. From what i've read, programs need to be 64bit compatible in order to run?

On the Flash thing, I just installed Flash on a 64bit system a week ago, and it said "Flash does not support 64bit systems" but they had a beta preview of a version that will support it. If Flash doesn't even support it, then there must be a lot of other programs out there that haven't been built with 64 bit support?

Great deal, but every second comment says they're pirated copies with serials that don't even work. Do you know if ANY of those retailers are selling legit copies? It would be great to get the 32+64 win7 for that cheap. Here's in NZ it's $500+

If you can order the SSD from a place where you can return it without reason. I was glad I could because the small speed gains I measured was definitely not worth the money for me.

jt_: don't be so grumpy and exaggerating all the time.

64bit

#693 posted by negke [88.70.58.137] on 2011/03/25 09:41:07

Yes, most software works. Only very old or very odd programs don't. The only ones I remember running into trouble with were either DOS-based (Quest, Quake installer) or certain OS-dependent drivers (my ancient scanner, some of the Audigy2 tools).

If you get Win7 Pro, you can use Virtual XP mode to run many of such programs, though it's not very comfortable to use as it takes long to load. Every time I reinstall I regret not simply downloading it somewhere which would probably be faster. :P

I don't know where you're getting your information from, but it's so wrong that it's scary. Forget whatever stories you've been told. Do you want to know the single difference that matters between 32 and 64 bit?

You get access to more memory. That's all.

Honestly, in practical terms, for the average user, that's about it. As has been mentioned here, programs and even drivers can run in 32 bit mode, and rarely exhibit any problems. I have yet to encounter a single problem that I couldn't fix.

I run old-ass games like Diablo 2, I run all the old Quake tools and editors, flash works of course. I have no complaints.

There may be some highly specific scenarios for certain people where they must have access to a 32 bit OS (can't imagine what they'd be) but for random home users like us, there is simply no reason not to upgrade if you have 4gb ram or more. Fuck dual booting or getting both 32/64 bit. Just get Winows 7 64 bit and be done with it.

I dont know if you can get Ultimate at that price in NZ :( I wish I did. As for them being pirated - well the retail version comes in a sealed box. I trust Amazon to sell me the right thing, and if they didnt - well their customer service would handle it well, I'm sure. Amazon are a trusted seller in my eyes.

Im on Home Premium, but I have a friend who bought the Ultimate disc just last week, and I dont know if he installed it yet, but it did come in a proper sealed box.... And I know that if it was pirated he would have called me by now :)

The version of IE which is included with 7 is quite good (ugh!) compared to previous versions.

I ran it for a couple of months before it started to rot, and then got Chrome, which is amazing :)

And yeah - as a web designer I have to test on IE because AFAIK it is still the most used browser (and the one with the most standards discrepancies)

GTX 460

#702 posted by negke [88.70.242.194] on 2011/03/25 15:48:16

What's a good driver to use? I'm asking because something's wrong here. Currently I have the latest driver installed and Stalker CoP + Complete mod doesn't run smoothly at all, even with some settings lowered. In fact, in some situations it slowed down to a crawl. The mod doesn't seem this excessive.

Haven't tried Crysis 2 yet, or any other modern game for that matter. I did notice that Tronyn's new Quake map doesn't run that smoothly, either - of course way better than with the card I played it on, but still a tad choppy in places.
This is on Win7/64.

Quadcore 2.3ghz. There didn't seem to be patches for the English version of CoP. SSAO settings are disabled and so is vsync.

The Complete mod does add quite some strain, but I didn't think it would be this extreme. I remember when I first played Risen (on a different card), it ran like shit. Then I read somewhere that some older driver version was recommended and that one actually allowed me to play it on max settings without a hitch. Hence my question - maybe it's a similar case now.

Ah, I See

#706 posted by negke [88.70.242.194] on 2011/03/25 16:17:19

Will try the things from the FAQ. I didn't realize there were hotfixes for the mod.

I read somewhere that ie9 actually passes more javascript tests and does better on the acid 4(might be 3) test than firefox. MS did a lot to ie9 to add all of the latest 'standards.' It's still significantly slower than all other competing browsers, though. I still prefer chrome, which has a much better UI.

just chiming in here to say that i haven't had any problems with w7 64bit so far that were show stoppers.

i got the professional edition because i was a little paranoid about older programs not working and such and while i have used it every now and then, it was a lot less than i thought i would need it.
the xp mode virtual machine integrates automatically with w7 itself and seems to work very well.

Ricky

#709 posted by negke [88.70.55.145] on 2011/03/25 19:56:03

The hotfixes didn't help, but using the 10.7 driver did improve the performance enough to allow for acceptable play on dx11 max settings. The end battle was choppy again - basically every time I encountered a larger number of enemies.
So still not sure about the optimal drivers and setting -; not that there's a lot of choice, for 64bit anyway. Will have to see.

I've got the HAF 932 and they are mint. Really good. Make sure you get a B3 stepping motherboard. It will say that somewhere if it is one. Get the Dual Channel 4GB or 8GB (2x4)kit, 1.5v RAM, 1600Mhz or more. The 6GB kit is for the socket 1366 motherboards only. You still only really need 4GB. But 8 could be a bit futureproof I guess.

Also the 6950's will be good. I think that with the dissapointing price/performance of the GTX 590 in comparison to the Radeon 6990 pretty much proves that you are better off with the AMD GPU. Having said that the NVidia ones are really close. And might have better drivers for all I know but I never really noticed any difference.

Be prepared to spend a reasonable amount of money on a big heatsink. I wold recommend getting a Scythe. Or a Noctua or a Thermaltake.

Do you think i'll need extra cooling beyond factory cooling? If so, what should I get... just a 120mm fan to do the whole case? I wasn't planning on overclocking it.

The 6950 I did a fair bit of research on, but it seems to be very similar in performance to the 560, but just slightly more expensive. The GTX has a better rep as well. I am still undecided between the 2 though.

Then you might aswell get the H67 board and the 2600 CPU rather than the 2600K. The ONLY difference between them is OVERCLOCKING.

With that kind of PSU, CASE and a good COOLER, you are BEGGING to OVERCLOCK IT!!!

Serioulsy the K series CPUs will overclock to 5Ghz on air, and the 2600 (non-K) version will still turbu at up to 3.7Ghz. So save yourself the money, dont get a P67 board but a H67 board because it will be cheaper, dont get a case with a bunch of massive fans included, and dont get a 'K' series CPU. Because those things are DESIGNED for overclocking. There is NO OTHER DISCERNIBLE DIFFERENCE.

Sorry, it just frustrates me that you would buy something like that and not even read the basic information about it! You must be loaded with $$$

It is easy to overclock with a K series CPU, you can easy hit 4.5Ghz without bumping any voltages other than the CPU VCore, and maybe the CPU I/O and PLL. You leave the power saving features ON (serioulsy) and all yu have to do is increase the multiplier from (in this case) 34 to 45. Big increase, hence the added value over non-K CPUs which have a locked multiplier.

But you can have 4.5 Ghz now with probably about 1 reboot, it's so easy on P67. And 4.5Ghz wont cost you very many volts, about 1.25 maybe (!)

Actually, let me rephrase that. I don't intend on overclocking 'at first'. A couple years down the track I would consider it, hence why I was getting the 2600K as I didn't want to leave myself stuck with a system that can't be overclocked. Reason being I don't see much need for overclocking now, when all the games I play are 2007/08. They'll pretty much all run on full on this system without overclocking. But when Crysis 3 hits in a few years and I'm getting problems running it on full, then I might overclock it. Then again, if it's as easy as you say to overclock it, perhaps i'll do a little bit.

Anyway that CPU will go to 5Ghz no problem, But they do like good coolers. Besides a big fancy rig like that with the red-LED fans and the SSD and such - it deserves a good cooler. By the sounds of it you wont need one at first, but it might be more convenient to put one in at the start...

The first batch of motherboards had the P/H67 chipset on them, but after the OEM customers got their hands on the chips to put on their mass-produced motherboards (dell, Hewlet Packard etc) their testing uncovered a bug where after 3 years of use, approx 15% of chips would have SATA2 controllers failing. So there was a mass product re-call back in February. Cost Intel apprx $700'000'000.00 (!!).

The B3 suffix means that the motherboard has the 'fixed' Cougar Point SATA2 controller, and is one of the motherboards made from March onwards.

Incidentally my board is a 'faulty' one, with the non-B3 stepping. Haven't had any problems (yet)......

if your 460 is having trouble running a Quake map then something is very very wrong indeed!

I'm currently using version 267.24 on my system and they are fine, these were the beta drivers released for Dragon Age 2 but I've not had any issues in any other games while using them.

Are you un-installing your old graphics drivers correctly before installing the new ones? Uninstall the current graphics driver from your add/remove programs, then reboot into safe mode and run your preferred driver cleaning program (I use DriverSweeper). Then reboot once again and install the new updated drivers.

i find it's worth getting 'fancy' cpu coolers just for noise reduction.
i got a thermaltake spin q vt and it cut the noise down from my machine in like half (i have super quiet case fans too).
the only thing left now for noise would be to get SSDs but even the WD HDDs i have are pretty quiet-- just a sort of low key mumbling when they are reading/writing.

If it is affecting performance in multiple games then it could be a PSU problem. What kind of PSU and Motherboard do you have? How old is your motherboard?

#722 posted by negke [88.70.228.100] on 2011/03/26 20:31:12

No, it was only Stalker with that mod. I can run Crysis 2 on max with a smooth frame rate. Although for some reason it keeps freezing the entire system after a while, complete with artifacts and sound failure. Using one detail level below seems to work fine.

I have an Intel 120gb which runs as my OS. I wouldn't consider anything under 120gb... i've only got 30gb left on mine and there's still some big programs I don't have installed, like most of the Adobe Creative Suite. No games go on it either.

I've only had it for 4 months, but no problems so far. The Intel ones aren't the most expensive, but they're definitely not the cheapest either.

I don't really know how much of a difference it makes to the computer, but it starts in about 20secs which is cool.

I sav a 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 a little while ago on aria.co.uk - 500MB/s Read speed and 450MB write. That is really fast. SATA 6Gb/s interface recommended. My point is that it was �140 which really wasn't bad. I was tempted. But I doubt I would put Steam on it, though I maybe could. I would want my OS on it, for the general performance increases, and slow loading apps like GIMP probably. And Quake, obviously.....

I've been looking around and putting together an idea for a PC build that seems within a good affordable price range and pretty modern (?) I have a preference to Radeon because I've been using them since I remember. Results of this are below, I'm wondering if this is pretty decent or if there's anything I should know about? Wish to get a new PC together as soon as possible, but any pointers is helpful since I'm a newbie with hardware (besides the setup part)

The 2500K is a monster of a processor (good taste in CPUs BTW), but it is predominantly designed FOR overclocking. You dont need much cooling either to get it up past 4Ghz. I have a crazy cooler, and mine is running at 4.6, although I was running is at 5Ghz for a long time.

BUT

Your motherboard is a H67 motherboard, which is a chipset which is designed for Sandy Bridge CPU's but it doesn't support overclocking.

You need to pair your CPU with a P67 or Z68 motherboard. Then you will be able to overclock it.

If you dont want to overclock, then you might as well get the i5 2500 (non-K), because it's exactly the same thing, but it has a locked multiplier.

The P67 or Z68 motherboards compined with a K series CPU allows for very easy overclocking. You can get surprisingly far by only adjusting about 2 settings in your BIOS.

Don't skimp on the RAM either. Especially because 1600Mhz RAM is so cheap! You will gain performance from the better RAM in this instance. Sandy Bridge CPU's like 2133Mhz RAM, but that is a little more pricey, but you might aswell go for atleasy the 1600Mhz stuff. Just make sure it's 1.5v or less. 1.5 is fine.

I would go for the 600 watt PSU, but im sure you could even overclock on the 500 if you wanted to.

Since I don't think I'll be overclocking, then the 2500 should sit well enough for me. it also answers the question I've been wondering about the 2500/2500K difference. Though I've never overclocked before, so I should do some research into this and tweak my choices where viable.

As for RAM, I was playing it safe since I'm a little confused in that area, whether or not the motherboard I chose will work with the RAM or such. So many numbers. So I should be safe with choosing 1600Mhz or higher for my board choice then?

Overclocking is a lot less intimidating then it used to be. With Sandy Bridge K CPUs you leave most of the settings as they are, you just adjust the multiplier and you will get quite far. I think you disable speedstep and increase the multiplier. You wont have to adjust any voltages to get to around 4Ghz. You only have to adjust a little bit to get a little bit further. Multiplier of 33 gives 3.3Ghz because the bus is locked at 100Mhz. So you just increase the number to 3.8 for example.

Then you get Coretemp (free), and Prime95 (free), run the blend test (default) on prime95, and check your temps. If it's less than 65degrees (70 is probably fine TBH) after ten minutes, and the test is still running, then you know you are OK.

The RAM. You want dual-channel DDR3, 240pin 1.5v 1600Mhz 9-9-9-27 or 9-9-9-24 are gonna be the timings. The lower the numbers, the faster the RAM. The last number should hopefully be 24 and not 27. The other three will be 9. If the last number is 27, it will still be fine.
You want to buy a 4Gb or an 8Gb kit. 4Gb is still OK, but a couple of games claim to be able to utilise more than 4Gb. 64-bit OS for more than 4Gb.

The same RAM will work with most of the AMD motherboards, the Intel socket 1156 and 1155 motherboards, universally. The 1156 RAM was 1.65v. But most 1156 mobo's will take 1.5v RAM, just not the other way round. YOU are buying 1155. This does NOT like 1.65v. It is designed for 1.5v or less.

i think what stops me from upgrading all the time (my machine is almost 6 years old!) is having to relearn all the hardware stuff every time.
most of ricky's post i'd never heard before, and i've been building my own machines for like almost 15 years now.

I switched to a 600w PSU, changed the chipset to a P67, grabbed an i5 2500K and picked out a 60GB SSD. I already went over my intended budget so I didn't want to spend too much over that which is why I stuck with a 6950, but I think this should be worth it. Already have a 2TB HDD which I can now use primarily for games (partitioned for XP & Steam atm) Ordered it all and everything besides the fan has been dispatched. Hope they have a fan instock or I'll have to try elsewhere.

It's pretty similar to my system quakis - 8gb ram, p67, 2500k. Except I got 120gb SSD, 700w power, and GTX 560 which I wouldn't recommend - out of the box it had issues which weren't resolved until I underclocked it. I didn't get any extra fans or cooling for it though.

right, this may not be the 100% most correct thread to post this in, but i put it here under the suspicion that the solution may involve some kind of hardware upgrade...

basically on HL2/portal and doom 3 (so two completely different engines) i've been getting extremely annoying bouts of slowdown, where framerate plummets to something like 3-4 fps, for periods of 30-60 seconds. this happens regularly every 5-10 mins or so, regardless of the type of area i'm in, and continues even when i escape to the menu and move the mouse around. after a while it just snaps back to normal speed as if nothing happened

now my comp isn't exactly great, but it was decent enough in 2008 when i bought it and i managed HL2, both episodes & portal back then without a hitch, but now it isn't having any of it, despite me not making any hardware changes since then.

i'm wondering if something could be knackered... gfx card, memory, cpu.. but thought i'd throw the problem out here to see if anyone's heard of it before and might be able to narrow down the possible causes!

could be a heat issue? If something is overheating it will throttle itself (cpu,gfx card) in order to not explode :) Check your fans etc to see if they are spinning freely.

If its not that, then perhaps a rogue process in windows that routinely hogs the cpu for something every few minutes, could by spyware or a legit program, keep an eye on task manager while the game is running and see if any other apps sudden rise to 100% cpu usage.

Cleaned out all that dust? You'd be surprised at how much of an improvement that makes, all that stuff clogging up the heatsink/fans and any vents. Can really turn up the heat. Otherwise, just ignore me.

Few years back, this never occured to me for some reason and upon actually checking and doing a thorough clean made a huge difference.

not sure where to post, so i'm posting here . i'm looking for a decent player for win7. winamp 5something sounds like shit or i can't properly configure it. So maybe i should move to another player. Any advice?
2.95 was great for XP

The GUI looks like shit (underdone, looks like 'generic windows XP' kinda), but I would highly recommend it. It has a lot of features and plays almost anything. And the sound quality is superior to Windows Media Player, I can guarantee that. Winamp never seemed too bad to me, but VLC sounds better for sure. I'm using some cheap 40watt desktop studio monitors, and I can really tell the difference between VLC and Media Player for sure.

but to be honest, if a media player sounds bad to you then there probably is something terribly wrong with your system or player config.

i have two OS on my PC , win7 and XP. and on XP the sound from winamp 2.95 much better and richer. in seven i'm using winamp5 as i cant launch 2.95 for seven

Argh :(

#761 posted by rj_loggedout [86.0.164.53] on 2011/12/31 03:08:33

okay, so portal 2 worked absolutely fine when i tried it on a different HD containing a fresh windows install (albeit a service pack & numerous updates behind) and i got a good day or two playtime out of it before i had to go away for christmas. however on returning and loading it back up i find the problem has resurfaced, only worse this time since it doesn't snap out of the slowdown unless i close the game and restart (and it kicks in after less than 5 minutes now)

drivers have been updated, temperature monitor has been installed (cpu is running a good 10 degrees below apparent average) and task manager shows nothing untoward. but it was actually working! then it wasn't! i can only assume an xp automatic update broke it? :(

something is obviously fucked. tempted just to thwack a load out on a new machine but that means no summer holiday next year!!

'intel core 2 duo' is better than processors marked as 'intel dual core' or 'intel core duo' (although they do exactly the same thing 'intel core 2 duo' is the most recent and generally better). aim for one that is at least 2.2 ghz (games like stalker need processors of this speed or above to run smoothly)

windows xp is generally better for gaming although there are games appearing that will only run on vista/windows 7

But that mostly sounds like advice from about 4 years ago. Current intel tech is sandybridge which I think gets sold under names like "second generation core i7" and is at least two generations on from the core 2 duo. The intel GPU that can accompany sandybridge chips actually has decent performance for an integrated gpu, but you'd want something gruntier for games I'm sure.

I don't understand any reason for limiting yourself to 2 gigs of RAM. I have 8 gigs in my laptop which would cost me all of US$45 currently.

first of all, fps below 50 in what game? quake? sure, you can get away with almost anything. crysis 2? different story.

core 2 duos are great cpus, i had one for 4 years iirc, before i got an i5. you do notice the higher clockspeed though, so i agree that you'd want to stick to at least 2.2, 2.4 or 2.6 would be even better of course. my core 2 duo was one of the really early ones and it ran at 1.8ghz and that definitely hurts performance. if you're getting a dual core intel, than price is going to be low across the board, so you may as well get the highest clockspeed cpu you can.

2gb of ram is tiny. on top of that, ram is super cheap. i picked up 8gb of pc3 10666/ddr3 1333 ram for 45$ (CAD).
you should get at least 4gb, 6gb would be better.

in general, i'd stay away from getting winxp this late in the game. especially if you plan to get more than 3.5gb of ram. if you can nab the winxp 64 version that's fine, but i don't know how fiddly that version is compared to 64bit win7.

just wanted to chime in and say that the difference of having the OS installed on an SSD is really amazing.
just make sure you find and follow a guide for installing windows 7 on an SSD.
you usually need to enable ahci on your ssd otherwise the installation will not install drivers needed to maximize performance, and fixing that AFTER windows is installed is a pain (i had to do that).

upgrading to a more recent iMac, which can run many games just fine. Probably more expensive though.

Price Check

#774 posted by Mike Woodham [87.127.250.2] on 2012/02/28 18:10:40

"i'm looking to spend �50 max"

For the graphics card, for the processor, or in total?

If you are not going 64 bit OS then stick to 4Gig of RAM because 32 bit cannot access higher than that. Vista 32 bit is apparently marginally better at handling memory than XP. The restriction is on total addressable memory, so it is not RAM alone that affects things and as necros says, you will not actuall have all 4gig at your disposal anyway.

i was thinking about �50 on ebay for the graphics card.
a friend has sent me some ebay links for pc's for about �150, but in need of a better graphics card.

i always run a few years behind the times, even with consoles. i'm not impatient with the need to have to see the 'top' games straightaway.
i'll be happy playing stuff that was new up to about 3-4 years ago. fps, adventure/sneak stuff.

Crysis is always mentioned when talk goes back to having a modern set-up.
i will probably leave titles like that until the hardware i need to run it dirt cheap (a year or two down the line!).

I don't see why you would want to get a Core 2 Duo this badly. Quad core processors aren't expensive, either, and I consider them low- to mid-range standard these days, whereas dual core seems somewhat antiquated already. Also, I'd suggest a graphics card with more memory - there are many 9600GT models with 1024MB.

i have it turned off for that disk, so it's not indexing or anything.
also, i've experienced the type of slow down during indexing before and rhis is a _lot_ slower.
you can't even watch a video because it'll constantly stall waiting for frames.

yeah, i'm starting to worry a bit. it's not really fragmented, but there's very little space left on it.
still, if these were the problems, then it would always be slow.
I do have a backup, but i wanted to be sure before i go out and get a new one. :)

thanks for reminding me about that. speedfan shows a few categories as being in the 'watch' level (as opposed to very good or normal......)
so i'm not sure how to really interpret these values.
not much on google about this either. i suppose it varies between manufacturers?

This time on a different disk then my last post.
Been getting a lot of 'bad block' error events alongside long (10-20s) lockups during disk access.

I've backed up all important data on it and am currently running a chkdsk /r (will probably take all day to finish...)

I've read conflicting opinions about this, some say it's just a simple fix of running chkdsk and reallocating those blocks and others say a bad block error is the herald of impending doom and the HDD is bound to fail.

harddrives are disposable storage, better have backups. badblocks do not mean that complete failure is imminent. they are no definitive sign for anything really. I have some flash memory that had badblocks from the factory. runs without problems for 2 years now.

yes, that's how I feel about hdds these days; I have two seperate backup hdds now.

so far chkdsk has replaced two separate instances of bad clusters on the drive.

badblocks do not mean that complete failure is imminent the drive is a little over a year old, but does get heavy use. i shall definitely err on the side of caution for this and i'll be picking up a replacement tommorow.

You will have to acquire a copy if you don't want to pay for it. It's saved me a couple of laptop hard drives.

Bad Clusters

#801 posted by Mike Woodham [109.156.192.7] on 2012/06/03 00:33:50

If chkdsk has replaced bad clusters, there is almost certainly nothing wrong with the hard drive itself. A bad cluster is simply the DFS ignoring it for use because of (probably) data corruption within those clusters. Remember, clusters are not sectors.

Presumably, chkdsk saved the data from the bad clusters in e.g. file001, file002 etc. If so, the disk can clearly be read. You can open those files and see if you recognise where the data comes from, which may help you understand what happened. Chkdsk will have also made the data space that those clusters occupied re-available to the DFS for normal use i.e. your available space does not continuously reduce through getting bad clusters as long as chkdsk is finding them.

Most common causes are power loss, or otherwise terminating a program in the middle of a file operation, which results in the DFS not 'understanding' the contents of the clusters and losing track of where they fit into the great scheme of things. Because of that, those clusters are not allowed to be overwritten by normal file operations.

Of course always back up your data but if the drive is only one year old, unless it was second hand when you bought it, or it is some obscure Chinese crap, you cannot have exceeded its working life no matter how much use you have given it.

Catastrophic failure is entirely different, is not foreseeable, and is really, really annoying...

well, the actual problem was bad blocks, which, as I understand it, is a physical problem.
chkdsk was reallocating bad clusters which I'm assuming were on the bad blocks (which is the same as bad sectors, which is not the same as bad clusters... at least in my limited understanding).

anyway, being paranoid about loosing data these days, i've already gotten a replacement. i just don't have enough experience with this kind of thing to make a better guess on the matter.

You are wrong. About the 2500K and 2600K and the new 3###K's not being for overclocking.

I mean have you read some info before crapping on my 'claim', which is public knowledge?

You can buy a core i5 2500 (no K here), and a 2500K, the only difference between the two is that the K one is designed to be overclocked and about $5. You can't change the multiplier on a non-K CPU, but you can on a 'K' one.

I'm not even going to find some links to back my 'claim' up, but good troll BTW. Look at my rant ^ (!)

The K options have an unlocked multiplier; the non-K have it locked. But you can change the BCLK on a non-K, so actually, both are "overclockable". So which was designed for what or are they both the same design, with the K versions just having some extra like a heated front windscreen or low profile tyres? Other than that?

That is true, but it's been proven that because of the way that Intel have designed their architecture, and due to the fact that the FSB is synched with the PCI bus directly, you cannot achieve a stable FSB overclock of more than about 5%. But if you use a 'K' series CPU and a motherboard chipset that supports overclocking in this way, overclocking via the multiplier will achieve results of stable 50% overclocks. Which is a factor of 10 times more than using the FSB.

As per usual, Intel are just 'disabling' the functionality for overclocking in their non-K CPUs rather than adding the functionality into the K series ones.

But the fact remains that the ONLY benefit (ahem) you will get from a K series CPU is the ability to overclock by up to 50% using the multiplier. So the affinity between the two means that Intel have released a range of CPUs which are designed specifically for the overclocker. QED.

Also, the onboard GPU is actually not that bad.
I have an i3 2330 in my laptop with HD3000 graphics, and I can actually run Skyrim on it. With super-low settings. It runs UE3 pretty well, Fallout New Vegas fine, even on med-hi.

So the affinity between the two means that Intel have released a range of CPUs which are designed specifically for the overclocker. QED.

Either I didn't understand a word you just wrote or you supported what Mike said: It's the same CPU sans the lock. The only difference is that the overclockable CPUs have passed more quality tests in the factory.

Semantics...

#812 posted by Mike Woodham [109.156.192.7] on 2012/06/03 17:37:12

...that's the point. Were they designed FOR overclockers or were they designed to allow overclocking? I would suggest that in use, far more will not be user-overclocked than will be. Of course, system-overclocking is another matter.

Lots of people will buy K series CPUs and not overclock them. Which IMO is dumb. And the customers that do that are silly. Because they would be just as well buying a non-K CPU. FFS.

I mean who the F would buy a higher performing CPU just to under-use it? Get real. By the time a non-K CPU has burned out, it will be totally obsolete. People just don't think like that.

They don't.

I Agree

#814 posted by Mike Woodham [109.156.192.7] on 2012/06/03 18:49:52

When buying a greenhouse, buy the biggest you can afford because once you start using it, you are going to fill it no matter how big it is.

But if you are only growing tomatoes for your summer salads, just put a couple of grow-bags on the patio. After all, you can only eat so many tomatoes.

Besides which, you can buy tomatoes at your local supermarket, and you don't have to water them everyday, or hoe the weeds, or squish the bugs, or watch out for bottom-end rot. Kind o'like sorta thing...

i got a non-k 2500 specifically because i did not plan to overclock. :P

as for drive cloning, i used the one that WD gives for free, Acronis True Image WD Edition...

It seems like it is only usable if you have a WD hdd so I don't know if it will work otherwise.

there are other free alternatives though that i remember seeing on google while searching.

Something to keep in mind is that the cloning process takes the machine out of commission for the duration of the clone. it can't seem to do it in the normal windows environment and has to reboot to run it's own software.
This makes sense though, because you wouldn't want someone adding or removing files on the disk while you're trying to make a complete copy of it.

is an i7-3770k with 16 GB ram and a gtx 680 enough for the next 2 yrs or so?

Crystal Balls

#820 posted by Mike Woodham [87.127.250.2] on 2013/02/07 16:00:31

I do all of my map compiling on a Pentium 4 2G. I also use it for music, photography archiving, surfing, and spreadsheets. I did not believe that would be the case when I bought it all those years ago.

I also have an i7 laptop running Windows7 @ 64bit, which I use for 'proper' work such as spreadsheets (2M+ cells) and photomanipulation.

No point in buying the i7 K version unless you are definitely going to overclock - last time I looked the plain version was cheaper.

Apart from that, yes it will easily last for two years provided that you do not look at all the releases in the meantime and convince yourself that you must have the latest otherwise the sky will fall in.

Mike is right about the overclocking - unless you are going to overclock there is no need to get a 'K' series CPU. Haswell is half a year away too. Not sure if that will use the same RAM and socket as the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge 1155 stuff.

680 is a beast, but if it's value for money you are looking for then look at the 660Ti or 670.
The performance goes down, but the VFM goes up.

Mike, dont need the latest etc was just trying to make sure I can play some of the newer games at decent settings over the next 2 yrs. Doesnt have to be at max settings or be every game, but would be nice not to worry about it if I want to get some titles.

Ricky, yeah might go with 670, it is about $150 cheaper in otherwise the same system.

I have read a few articles on old systems with new video cards. They play games well. Seems the video card slot is what will obsolete a system build. If a new slot spec comes out. 2-3 years out a video card update is all that you should need. Get a 4 memory slot board so if later you want to do 32 gigs memory you can.

BTW anyone use a SSD drive?

Another thing get THE BEST power supply you can. Every computer failure I've had was a failed power supply. Either random shutdown or out right shorts and blown capacitors.

Excellent things! I have two at work. Both machines boot to the desktop in <30secs. Having the OS and core applications installed on the SSD makes for a much smoother experience. Everything loads almost instantly.

For my home rig I am waiting for the 480-512GB ones to drop a little more, so I can happilyu instal all my steam games on it, and not worry too much about the downloads file getting full.

And yes - a good PSU is worth the money. Corsair, Antec or OCZ, Cooler Master or XFX.

I love my SSD. My old Core2Duo conked out last fall and I had to build a new machine. I decided to go with an SSD and I'm very happy I did. That sucker boots to the Windows 7 desktop in less than 16 seconds, and most of that is the BIOS starting up. From BIOS beep to the desktop is only about 3 seconds.

I also have an HP Microserver with over 4 TB of storage and I run gigabit ethernet, so the small size of the SSD in the new computer is no problem (it's a Crucial M4 120GB). It also has a 1 TB WD Black that was the data drive in the Core2Duo.

Well, I think boot times are something people use just as an example because almost everybody can relate to waiting for Windows to load. Pretty much anything that uses the disk is going to run a lot faster. When I double-click on Firefox, my homepage pops up in one second. Save games load very, very fast if the game is on the SSD.

Recently upgraded to 16GB ram, I thought of maybe plugging 32 just cause I can, but 8 was already plenty -- had to upgrade since some of it was faulty. I love how cheap RAM is nowadays. But now I really want to upgrade my GPU, it's just not cutting it anymore for the newer stuff. Right now I'm on some cheap ass 240GT, passive cooling tho, which is nice. What's the best bang for buck Geforce (sticking to nv) in the 100-200$ price range? GTX660 with dual slot fans seem to be coming up in the pricelists.

The 770 is way over my budget though, I'dd never pay that amount for a gpu. I don't mind being behind on the curve a bit either. The thing with the waiting game is you never know how long it might take, and 'the next big thing' is always around the corner :P

The Mac Mini actually seems suprisingly decent at running some light games, I was expecting to be only able to run stuff at low resolution, lowest details and still only get a barely playable fps due to only having an integrated Intel HD4000 GPU, but it's much better then that.

Playing in OS X, at 1280x720 (which is my native res cut exactly in half, so there are no distortion artefacts), details high to medium, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, COD: MW all run smoothly without any issues

I've swapped out the stock HDD for my HP 4520s for an intel 530 SSD. When in any operating system, it performs perfectly. The bios was already set for ahci so I didn't need to do the registry key trick to get it going.

There's only one problem: every *other* time I boot up, the drive is not detected at all. It does this consistently:
Drive detected
Reboot
Drive not detected.
Power off, Power on, (note, won't detect if I Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart)
Drive detected

This happens no matter what OS I boot into, Windows 7 or Ubuntu (from a flash drive).

I transferred the old data from my HDD (500gb) onto the SSD (180gb) using the dd command on linux.
I had to shuffle some partitions around (as well as shrink one) to get it to fit on my SSD.

Because the C: partition was in the middle, i had to do these steps:
Using windows disk management, shrunk C: partition to 95gb.
Booted into Ubuntu
With GParted, Moved HP recovery and tools partition adjacent to the end of the C: partition
Used dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb to clone entire HDD to SSD

I am no expert. I recently installed a SSD in my desktop and will never go back to HDD for the OS drive.
Does the drive show on the POST screen? Then does it get lost to the OS or is it hardware not found in bios? If you boot from a USB stick is it the same?
A quick google search shows you are not alone with the problem.
https://www.google.com/#q=intel%20530%20ssd%20not%20recognized

When it happens, the drive is completely undetected and doesn't show up in the BIOS.

When booting to a USB Ubuntu, if the SSD was not detected, then Ubuntu bootup would usually hang right at the start right after the GUI is loaded, otherwise it boots up normally (and the SSD shows up normally).

I suspected it might be something firmware related, but I really wanted to confirm that somehow before trying to update that. Unfortunately, whenever I find a post about it, it doesn't seem to match exactly what I see myself.

I've just been playing Two Worlds II. I've got at least 33 keys on the keyboard mapped out and are keys I use, probably several others I haven't needed so maybe 40 in total. OH plus the mouse buttons.

How the FUCK would I map 40 keys to a gamepad? I'm looking at the ps4 gamepad and it has 14 buttons, no mouse. How on earth do people prefer this to a keyboard when you have all these shortcuts you can press?

Plus the fact that real gamers will play the game at the optimal quality, which will always be on PC.

So I don't really see PC gaming ever dying, as long as people still buy desktop computers.

Very hot here today (34 degrees). Giving my 2011 macbook pro 15" a little work, i noticed a single vertical line on the display. No system crash and it's cooled down now and line has gone.
At the time, cooling was going fine - about 6000 rpm - and GPU never got above 60, though CPU was at times up to 85.

Re my screen hardware fault - Yah... Most of the summer i had a screen line. So i've been looking out for a 2011 display for <= $200 (I can do it myself). But it's turned cold tonight and it's disappeared. :)

Has anyone checked out the new 12" Macbooks ? It has one freaking port. 1! Even by apple's standards, that's pretty amazing for a whole thirteen hundred US bucks. Some new USB thing for power and usb and video. Also has a retina display, a new keyboard getting mixed reviews, and a super low power Intel Core M with a decent turbo speed of >2.4GHz
http://www.apple.com/macbook/

Well, it is time for me to build up a new rig to catch up on 5+ years of PC gaming. What I can't decide on is what LCD to buy. I'm opting for 1920x1080 ones, preferably a 120/144Hz one. The thing is, no matter which one I'll choose it looks like I won't get the clarity and contrast of a high-end CRT (which I still use one way or another). It's clear that the newer tech has still its shortcomings. Still, no other options on the market so the step must be taken. So, do you guys have any recommendations?

the Asus VG248QE on Daz's recommendation. It's a great monitor, it's 144hz and will make it impossible for me to go back to 60hz. For gaming I cannot recommend it enough, it may be even more true for older games since they don't tend to limit their frame-rate to 60hz.

Truly it is the best monitor I have ever bought, in a lot of ways it's superior to the 4k TV that I own.

The monitor isn't without it's faults though. The default settings are terrible, you will spend 20-30 minutes trying to get the brightness/contrast etc perfect. I have no idea how people without a monitor already do this, I used my tablet as a reference to get the colours right.

Also the monitor appears to have a very bizarre dithering problem. I don't have a clue why it uses colour dithering in some circumstances as it clearly has an excellent range on it. You will see it on some games more than others. After a while you won't notice or mind it but it is jarring at first.

erc what'd you decide on for your build? My computer is also 5 years old so I'm about to build a new computer too. Trying to keep it below NZ$3000 (USD$2000), which it's right on now. Anyone else just got a new computer?

I guess it's dependent on how close you sit to your screen and how big your screen is. One of my friends has a 30 inch screen at 4k but sits about a foot away from it. I can't imagine that being a good experience.

I believe the panel I am using is 22-24 inches (at the most) and 1080p is perfectly fine. I can barely make out the pixels. It's more noticeable in games but I would much rather have a lower res and a much higher frame-rate. I mean, games still look stunning in 1080p IMO.

I guess 1440 is becoming a new pc standard. I don't see a reason to go much higher. You're going to pay a huge performance cost unless you have a beast of a pc to go with it.

I guess it's dependent on how close you sit to your screen and how big your screen is. One of my friends has a 30 inch screen at 4k but sits about a foot away from it. I can't imagine that being a good experience.

I believe the panel I am using is 22-24 inches (at the most) and 1080p is perfectly fine. I can barely make out the pixels. It's more noticeable in games but I would much rather have a lower res and a much higher frame-rate. I mean, games still look stunning in 1080p IMO.

I guess 1440 is becoming a new pc standard. I don't see a reason to go much higher. You're going to pay a huge performance cost unless you have a beast of a pc to go with it.

I've looked into LCD monitors much and for the time being, decided for an IPS panel: they're slightly behind in response times but better in color reproduction. It seems that 120/144Hz panels with GSync/FreeSync are still using more-or-less experimental tech and more prone to err. Besides, they're way more expensive than a quality 60Hz panel (at least in these parts) and apart from a certain ASUS product, all of them use TN panels which are worse in color reproduction than the ones that are utilizing IPS panels. Still, I'll be considering a second monitor of that type next year, when hopefully they'll be more affordable and better in terms of design.

As for resolution, I opted for 1080p. Considering the limitations of LCD tech, it's clear that the monitor one uses directly effects the life of the actual rig - owing to the 'natural resolution' fact (which wasn't a problem with CRT's). If I choose a 1440p monitor, my rig needs to be powerful enough to run that res at 60Hz constantly. If I use a 1080p one instead, I decrease that need by a notch - where acceptable, I'll use AA, wherenot, I'll be a able to squeeze at least a year more from the same rig by simply not using AA.

yeah, gfx card power was one of the reasons I went with a lower native res on a 27". At the time, I had a lowly GTS 250. Now with the GTX 960 I would be fine with a 1440 display.

otoh, erc, i see you are going for a 24". My last monitor was a 24" @ 1080 and that was more than enough to look crisp, but i would say 24" is about the max before the pixels start to be pretty visible.

but the 30" Fifth was talking about earlier? It needs to be 1440 at the least. 4k is probably excessive. Also windows doesn't scale fonts properly the way mac OS does, so you can end up with a lot of subtle broken UI elements.

Yup, I figured out that anything above 24" won't look good enough on 1080p. Besides AA, there's also DSR that KillPixel mentioned - using those methods I think I'll be pretty happy with what I get. Crispness of the image wins over bigger screen size for me. I have been using 17"/19" CRTs for over 15 years now - never had the urge to go bigger.

I wonder what they'll try to sell us after 4K. Isn't that close to the resolution limit of the human eye?

I don't understand the infatuation with liquid cooling. I see little need to overclock these days and the stock Intel fans are all but silent except under heavy loads. It's not that liquid cooling isn't a little better or less noise, but the improvement doesn't seem anywhere near worth the added complexity and cost.

I used to be an AMD person and aftermarket coolers were pretty much a necessity. In 2007, starting with the Core2Duo, I switched to Intel. I've always just bought their boxed processors. They come with a heatsink and fan and a 5 year warranty. I've not had any problems at all.

The first thing I did when I got my 4790k was delid it, level it via sanding and applied liquid ultra and OC'd it to 5ghz with great temps. That's probably a little excessive and not for everyone.

I just recently got my gtx980 to 1.5ghz core / 8ghz mem!!! the thing is a beast!!

@ Rick - In my experience, intel coolers are fine for typical consumer use in a well configured case. They tend to last quite a while. However, for anything beyond that, the performance simply isn't there.

Maybe this is a software question rather than a hardware question, but here goes:

So I've been playing a few Quake 3 Arena maps for inspiration (and curiosity to see what some people whose Q1 maps I know have done for Q3) and then suddenly two of the maps I had in my baseq directory stopped working, as in, the little preview screen that you normally see just showed a Q3A logo and the map name was scrambled and the game wouldn't load the map. I tried deleting the maps and replacing them with fresh downloads but no dice.

Then I read on the internet that if files randomly become corrupt, that can be a sign of the start of HDD failure. Might this be the case? Or is Q3A (I run it via ioquake on Linux) known to be quirky?

I also heard some disturbing noises at one stage, but this was months ago and went away: a sort of a krrr-click, krrr-click. I thought back then my HDD was about to die, but as I said, the noises went away and never came back.

Also: if I do need to replace the HDD, is it worth going for an SSD when the laptop isn't that great to begin with? Will it help at all (in terms of speed) with mapping, or is mapping more reliant on memory + CPU?

I tried deleting the maps and replacing them with fresh downloads but no dice.

can you also try this:

rename the broken map to something else
unzip a fresh copy
try to run the fresh copy

i think if you overwrite a file and the size is the same, the hdd will just reuse the same sectors instead of writing to a new place on the disk. if you rename, the original will keep the sectors it is using and the hdd will need to allocate a different part of the disk to the fresh copy of the map.

if this makes the map work, then that definitely indicates that the original copy became corrupted on the desk.

have you tried running a disk scan? also, try getting speedfan and then checking the SMART info on your hdd to see if it is reporting errors of failing health checks.

regarding ssd in any computer: in all but the first piece of shit computer, and ssd is going to be a huge performance boost. it is the single best upgrade you can do to your computer; plus, ssds are quite cheap now.

I think I have the most important stuff backed up, but I'll double-check (I'm not on the computer with the suspect HDD at the moment; I'm using my really shitty backup computer at the moment that's only good for light internet usage as I was afraid of sudden catastrophic hard-drive failure on my main computer without a proper plan of action at the ready).

speedfan is Windows-only, I think? But it looks like badblocks will work for checking the HDD under Linux. And thank you for the tip about renaming the map files; I'll try that too.

I've heard that with HDDs, you should try not to use too much of the drive's capacity, as in, your HDD shouldn't be 90% full, as this will slow down the system. If true, is that the case with SSDs as well? I'm just asking because on my budget, I'm looking at SSDs with a smaller capacity than my currently 60%-full HDD...

well, i don't know if it's still like this for ssds, but you should partition the disk to something like 90% for the actual usage, and leave 10% unpartitioned to give the drive room to move things around. i forget the details but you can google that.

also, look into using linux on a usb stick to do a complete drive copy bit for bit to your new drive. you can continue where you left off like you never changed hardware.

Still haven't got round to sorting out my primary computer (thanks again for the responses!), but my back-up computer (an old netbook) has some odd issues too, and as I haven't been able to find answers on the rest of the internet, I thought I might ask here...

So the odd thing is that whenever I start up the netbook, it opens a few applications automatically: a File Manager window, an image viewer programme and one or two other things. Basically, it behaves as if it's remembering the last few things I had open before I last shut the system down. The problem is, these are not things I had open; I had them open a few months ago when this started happening -- it's as if the system keeps restoring itself to a state from a few months ago.

I'm using Linux Mint, and under System --> Sessions and Startup I've made sure that none of these applications are set to auto-start, and that the system does not save my session when I log out.

So I've been wondering whether this is a hardware problem, and to my complete layperson's mind, it seems like there could be something wrong with the ram? As in, it never gets cleared and keeps "remembering" stuff it should long ago have discarded? Or is that a laughably misinformed idea?

The system probably seems to restore an old saved session and this has nothing to do with ram and probably nothin with autostart applications.

See if there are files in $HOME/.cache/sessions and try to move them away then reboot.

Restoring a session is done by your login manager which in Linux Mints case should be MDM if I'm not mistaken. Try too google for disabling session restoring. It's probably some old session config laying around in your homedirectory and would be fixable by moving these files away so the system regenerates them from a default one.

I just rebooted and the problem seems to have resolved itself, but I have no idea how that happened.

I looked in ~/.cache/sessions as you suggested, but it had nothing except for a single .png image image file. After rebooting (with the system finally starting up again as it should) I looked again and saw a new .state file, which seems to have been newly generated; there was nothing like this when I last looked. So it's as you said it would be, only I didn't remove any old session config files...

I was just wondering, do any of you use anti-static precautions when swapping out computer parts -- in particular laptop parts? Is it crucial when swapping out an HDD/SSD, or are those things shielded already? How about RAM chips?

The internet seems to be full of very conflicting opinions on this, ranging from "it's the most important thing ever and you'll destroy your computer otherwise, often in insidious ways you won't notice immediately" to "eh, I build pcs for a living and do so in woolen slippers while rubbing a balloon on my head".

Also, lots of conflicting advice on what do do, ranging from effectively plugging yourself into the mains via a specially-made device (the instructions seem specifically aimed at people living in the US, though, which I don't) to touching the metal chassis of the computer once in a while (which doesn't help in the case of a laptop). Some say the former method will do more harm than good; others say the latter is completely useless. So I'm pretty confused and scared (which is the human condition, I guess).

Assembled boards are not as susceptible to ESD damage as their individual components are, but the risk is still there. The computer industry is a cut throat business. They wouldn't waste money on static protection packaging if it wasn't necessary.

If a computer has a power supply installed and it's plugged into a grounded outlet, then touching the metal case immediately before handling or installing parts may be good enough.

I always work on PCs in the kitchen where there is no carpet and frequently touch the water faucet to get rid of any static build up. Remember to only handle cards and memory sticks by the edges and stay away from the contacts. Never touch the pins on the processor.

Wear rubber shoes with as little tread as you can, only stand on shagpile carpet, make sure that you lubricate the case with water for easier fitment of devices and Wear a tall metallic hate while building the computer in a lightning storm outside.

Finally managed to replace my cranky HDD with an SSD. Hopefully didn't break/damage anything in the process, though time will tell, I guess. Now I just need to reinstall all the stuff I had before (started over with a fresh OS install) and then I can finally get back to mapping...

Thanks! I was just about to ask if people have any advice on SSD-optimization on Linux. According to what I've read, Linux Mint 17.3 (which is what I installed) automatically enables TRIM -- is there a way to test whether this is the case?

What do I need to do with alignment? Is it too late if I've already started copying data over onto the SSD?

Hey... Does anyone know if there's a way to fix led screen backlights not turning on? I can switch input modes a couple of times and that fixes it,.but if the screen is off for an extended period of time, the backlights don't turn on again until I switch modes again.

I had a similar problem on an Asus monitor. Seems like that kind of problem must be really difficult to fix, because I sent it back to them for warranty repair three times and they never managed to do it. I finally got tired of fucking around with the back and forth shipping hassles and just tossed it. Not sure if I'll ever buy another Asus product.

I'm getting some annoying horizontal tearing playing a few games on the external monitor connected up to my laptop. It's a bit like the classic tearing but not as jaggy any more ripply. It's much worse on the external monitor rather than the laptop's own screen. I also got it a bit on a couple of youtube videos with quick vertical panning.

I've checked the HDMI cable and tried another one, no effect.

I've turned G-Sync off (external monitor is not compatible and lappy needs a bios tweak to use it anyway)

I've turned triple buffering on and tried V-Sync on both On and Adaptive modes.

No effect....

This didn't seem to be happening on Doom4 nor Dark Souls3 on the external monitor before, and definitely wasn't happening with Battlefleet, Solus, nor Metro 2033 Redux on the laptop screen. I'm wondering if it could be a problem with going >60FPS??

I will try new drivers and tweaks tomorrow, but in the meantime....HELP!!

On a Benq 22" at the moment, was good at the time, but contrast is noticably worse that my laptop screen, and I wouldn't mind a couple more inches oooh errr missus. Was tempted by a 144hz but then saw this curved one and wondered if it would be a fun experience:

The point of the curved screen as I see it is to maintain optimal viewing so you do not have to turn your head to either side.

For reference I have a curved 34" monitor and I do not have to physically move my head to see the very edges.

So I guess as long as it isn't jacking up the price, it's always a fun conversation piece. The more important features would be the increase refresh rate though. Definitely go for that criteria before others.

I mostly play games on a PC connected to the TV in the living room. I was looking at new TVs at Walmart the other day, and there is a huge difference between 1080p at 60 Hz and 4K at 120 Hz.

The biggest problem is that you would almost have to use scaling in Windows if you want to read text and tell which icon is what. Some programs have problems when scaling is used, but they are usually fixable.

Something I've often wondered is does 60hz look as good on a 120/144hz display as it does on an actual 60hz display? or will you get tearing/other issues? I have a 980 and there are very few modern games that I can drive at +100fps.

i have an old CRT 19" that does 1600x1024 at 75hz, and 1024x768 at 120hz, i can tell the diff going from that to a lcd at 60hz even with maxfps at 150, it still choppy, so i use motion blur to hide that.

I had to flash a bios once before and it bricked the board. That was long time ago, maybe things are better now.

The board is a GA-Z77X-UD3H. The processor is an i5-3570K. I think this is still pretty good for everyday use and even gaming, though it's close to 5 years old, but I didn't put the greatest video card in it when it was new and a GTX 550 Ti just won't cut it for newer games.

With the new card in, a GTX 1050 Ti, it hangs during boot. Pretty badly too. I had to reboot using the onboard Intel graphics before I could get it to work with the old card again.

I was looking at new parts and wow, DDR4 memory is expensive. I'm not sure at this point how new I can go without having problems installing Windows 7.

that's a good board and flashing should be straightforward. There is a chance, of course, of bricking the board if you interrupt the flashing process. Gigabyte probably provides a flashing utility along with the bios, might find it here. There's been a number of compatibility updates for this board, what version are you running now?

I'm assuming mobo/card drivers are up to date, the card is properly seated in the first slot and the mobo is properly configured? Have you tested the card in another system? It's not super uncommon to have a faulty card...

Anyway, I'm sure the issue can be solved with minimal grief. However, building another system is always fun too :P

I'm not sure it's actually possible to "brick" this board. It has dual BIOS, so I think recovery is always possible, but their documentation is lacking and actually getting it to work is kind of hit and miss.

There were a couple of occasions when I was having trouble booting from a certain SSD that it proclaimed the main BIOS was "corrupt" and restored it from the back up BIOS, but knowing that I never even went in to the BIOS to change anything I'm at a loss as to how it magically became "corrupt".

At the moment it's running fine with the old video card and I don't really have a viable fall back machine for playing games so I'm reluctant to mess with it anymore.

I guess now I'll try and dig my way through all the FUD and see if I can figure out just how modern of a machine I can assemble and still have no problems installing Windows 7 on it.

I understand that. upon further research I think a bios update should do the trick. however, I get you don't feel comfortable doing it.

see if I can figure out just how modern of a machine I can assemble and still have no problems installing Windows 7 on it.

Even the latest enthusiast mobos will have win7 support, general mobos might even have vista/xp support. It should be listed in the specs. If you shop from newegg, for example, the supported operating systems are usually found at the bottom of the spec page. If you don't see anything listed for a particular mobo you can always go to the manufacturer's website and see what drivers are available for that board.

For what it's worth, I also have a gigabyte motherboard and you can update the bios using the windows utility from their website and it will automatically find, download and update the correct bios for you. It's completely painless.

Yeah, I'm probably going to have to break down and try the BIOS update. It's currently using version F11 and the latest available non-beta is F18. I don't really see anything in their descriptions that indicate fixes for video problems though.

I poked around a bit in the BIOS settings but everything is set to the default and nothing much looked like it would affect an add in video card.

After an hour or so at Newegg it looks like I can build something new for about $600. I guess the worst thing about that is the GTX 1050 TI was intended as a cheap upgrade for an old computer, it's not really what I'd want to put in something new.

And there's the added hassle of making a Win 7 install disc with USB 3.0 drivers included.

Okay, the BIOS is successfully updated to version F18, which is the most recent non-beta version (still dates from 2012 though).

There were apparently 8 BIOS updates during the board's first year, then nothing until some kind of audio fix in 2014.

I guess I'll use it for a day or so to make sure there's no problems. I'm not really looking forward to digging it out to replace the video card - again. It's the living room entertainment machine and it's hooked up to tons of stuff, so there's a lot of cables to plug and unplug.

The F18 BIOS update for the GA-Z77X-UDH3 did fix the problem. Internet was down last night (for the second time in a week), so with nothing better to do I went ahead and installed the new GTX 1050 Ti video card. It booted right up. So yay.

I've never used HDMI much before and to me it seems ridiculously bright with over saturated color. I lowered the color from 50 to 40 on the TV and that's better. I used the Windows color calibration to drop the gamma to the absolute minimum. Now the desktop and programs look about right, but had to increase it in some games and VLC to compensate.

I also noticed some strangeness in Quake where occasionally an entire surface would flash bright white or maybe just inverted color. Hard to say since it happens so quickly, not a major issue in any case.

when you use hdmi with nvdia cards it defaults to a limited dynamic rang (16-235). To fix this, go to the nvidia control panel, select "adjust video color setting" at the very bottom, then check "with the nvidia settings" then set the dynamic range to full (0-255).

Not sure why nvida throttles the display range by default with hdmi...

it will look dark/dim/desaturated because you calibrated your display to compensate for the limited range. after setting it to full range you'll have to recalibrate which, of course, will be well worth it.

I looked and everything in the Nvidia control panel is set to "other applications" control. The setting is there though. I'll have to fiddle with it later because...

I just got off the phone after spending over an hour with Comcast trying to resolve an intermittent internet connection problem. I have probably suffered permanent brain damage and cannot handle anything technical right now.

Anyway, I got it all cleaned up, assembled (even used AS5 on the cpu for old times sake) and up and runnning, then... pop. lost a capacitor on the mobo :( I found a local repair shop, maybe they'll do a quick recap for cheap tomorrow. If all goes well, that cpu should clock over 3ghz on air.

Before, with VGA I would set brightness in Fitzquake to 3 clicks above minimum and everything looked fine. Now, with HDMI the status bar and menus to appear too bright compared to VGA. I have to set brightness at minimum to fix this, but playing maps at this setting causes them to be too dark to see almost.

The actual picture quality is better, but trying to get all these brightness issues worked out is getting tedious. I'm beginning to think this HDMI is more balanced for impressive pictures on TV viewing and not so much for computers. Though it may well be just the way my particular TV was designed.

One good thing is that the Sharpness setting is available with HDMI, so now I can set it to minimum and get decently sharp onscreen text. On the VGA input it was at 50%, grayed out and not adjustable.

I kept thinking something was wrong when the desktop seemed to need excessive gamma adjustment to look right and started changing other things.

I finally realized that any changes to the TV's HDMI brightness or contrast made Quake look really bad. I put them back to the 50% default (same as what the VGA input was set at), and just used the built-in Windows DCCW to set the gamma to whatever it took to look right.

The DCCW slider has no numbers, but if the default center position is considered 50%, then where it looked good on the GTX 550 was no lower than 40%. The new GTX 1050 needs more like 20-25%, which seems like a big difference to me.

I did leave the TV's color setting down at 30% because the default was way oversaturated. Whether that's due to the TV, the video card, or just the difference between VGA and HDMI, I don't know.

Those occasional flashing surfaces in Quake are somewhat annoying. I've even seen some completely disappear, but only for a instant. It's random and doesn't repeat no matter how much I move around near the same spot and viewing direction. It almost has to be some kind of driver issue.

Correct. I've only looked at Fitzquake so far. I also test stuff on Quakespasm but haven't had a chance yet. My copy of Mark V is probably not the latest version.

#993 posted by Jaromir83 [87.249.129.250] on 2017/04/14 14:13:47

can i7 3770K CPU PC use better GPU than GTX970 or would the performance from any better GPU be bottlenecked by this old CPU? there is no better CPU form my MoBo socket than the i7 3770K, which MoBo/socket to get nowadays? (play mostly DX9 games) thanks

$400 isn't cheap (might be able to find one for $300 on ebay). Sadly, that's the most economical performance boost atm. He's already at the price/performance sweet spot so any increase in performance from that will be premium dollars. Even if he spent 4x that much on a new build he would still only be at about a ~50% performance increase (in gaming).

My advice if you don't want a small upgrade to tide you over is to just save $$ until the next generation of cpus/gpus release (not ryzen, think icelake/volta) then buy after the first price drop.

One word of advice: you will never regret saving up and building a top end system. They last longer as you waste less time and money upgrading over the years. I think it's better to "suffer" for a while and save up for a very powerful system paying attention to CPU/MoBo/GPU trends. Watch out for GPU price drops when nvidia announces new tech. I've gone the cheapskate route where I've bought a decent MoBo and then every few years upgraded CPU and video card but that's actually proven pretty wasteful overall. Save up and go big when the timing is right, I've never regretted it.

Just bought a Razer Lancehead for $80 USD. Im coming from a Logitech G400. I had a SteelSeries Rival 300 for a litte bit but returned it.

The Rival line of mice suffer a fatal flaw, in my opinion. Mouse1 and Mouse2 buttons are designed in a way that allows them to rub into each other and can inhibit the travel of the opposing button. It blew my mind that this was allowed to happen.

The Razer Lancehead is ambidextrous so any of you who are left handed may like it.

Only complaint would be the side buttons are a bit too low so I accidentally hit them. A little bit of grip retraining is in order.

I use small ambidextrous laptop-size mini-mice. I find they offer good control and the size is best for wrist (no rsi) compared to these oversized heavy gaming mice/Razers with a million buttons... anyone else use mini mice?

are fine for those who don't rest their palm on the mouse. I use Logitech's ergonomic mice, they're just perfect for my hand. I've owned a MX-510 for years now and TBH I'm quite amazed it's still working...

I still own and use my original 2005 era Diamondback. It's smallish and has always felt right to me. I don't pick my mouse up while playing games. I use a high sensitivity. I don't like the more "ergonomic" mice these days. Feels like I have my hand placed on a rock. I never use the side buttons.

It's pretty great so far, but the plastic it's made from has not always held up that well in the long run - back in like, 2010 or so I owned a Razer Abyssus that was made of similar stuff and ended up "peeling" from sweat. Pretty gross!

The vertical mouse is really comfortable in my experience. It's supposed to be good for your wrist since having it perpendicular to your desk rather than parallel is a more natural position. I never had wrist problems before, but I also don't now so I can testify that it doesn't cause them...